The IMF’s Christine Lagarde delivered a speech in Berlin Monday warning that, without dramatic action, the world risked another Great Depression. …”We estimate a global potential financing need of $1 trillion,” she said. “To play its part, the IMF would aim to raise up to $500 billion in additional lending resources.” …Perhaps an IMF managing director with sound ideas about what makes an economy grow might deserve a raise. The first thing such a director would demand would be to cut the Fund’s size in half, not double it.

The WSJ’s editors are right to criticize the IMF. The folks in charge at the international bureaucracy, depending on the circumstances, have a nasty habit of supporting Keynesian spending and class-warfare tax hikes.

Let’s look at two very recent news reports to prove this point.

Our first example is from Europe, where there’s a discussion of how to address the fiscal crisis. Remarkably, the IMF has staked out a position to the left of Germany, arguing that more government spending will boost growth in Europe. Consider these excerpts from a Washington Post article.

Germany, the economic engine of Europe, is afraid it could get stuck paying much of the cost to bail out its weaker European neighbors. It is pushing instead for budget cuts, which the IMF says could weaken growth further and undermine market confidence. The IMF is already lending to the region’s bailout fund and has a lead role in monitoring the progress that nations such as Greece make in reducing their government deficits. Germany, meanwhile, is also a large contributor to the bailout fund. …If Europe doesn’t take several steps recommended by the IMF, such as reducing its emphasis on budget cuts, the 17 nations that share the euro could contract at a much faster pace, the fund said. That could possibly plunge the rest of the world into recession.

We have another story that is equally upsetting. IMF bureaucrats get tax-free salaries, yet they frequently urge governments to impose higher taxes. And they have a very troubling habit of undermining tax reform.

The International Monetary Fund may require Hungary to change its flat personal income tax as part of a bailout agreement, according to a person familiar with the Washington-based lender’s preparations for the talks. The flat tax will be an important part in any program discussion, said the person, who declined to be identified because official talks haven’t started. The IMF is in general opposed to flat-tax systems.

I’ll confess that I’m not overly sympathetic to Hungary’s plight. The government is in a mess because it keeps overspending.

But if the IMF is going to foolishly provide a bailout, wouldn’t it be better if the bureaucrats made the money contingent on implementing good policy rather than bad policy?

I’m biased, of course, so I’ll understand if you discount what I say. But I hope you’ll agree that my colleagues have put together an excellent video response to the President’s state-of-the-union speech.

It was equally revealing that he didn’t spend much time on the so-called income inequality issue. Redistribution was implicit in what he said, to be sure, but the Occupy-Wall-Street crowd is probably disappointed that he didn’t explicitly embrace their agenda. More evidence that the pollsters played a big role in this speech.

And I was stunned that he could talk about the housing meltdown and mortgage crisis without mentioning the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac. Sort of like analyzing World War II and pretending Germany and Japan didn’t exist.

I even was a bit disappointed in Governor Daniels’ remarks. He focused a lot on means-testing for entitlements, but that’s the wrong way of reforming the programs. Such policies impose higher implicit marginal tax rates on people who save and invest during their working years.